In this episode, we talk to Adam Sud as he shares his fair share of struggles in dealing with depression and food addiction and how he overcame them by seeking help and living a healthy lifestyle.
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Social Media Handle: @plantbasedaddict
Publications:
Memorable Moments:
4:11 I was very accepting of myself, both physically and emotionally. But all of a sudden I was told there are now conditions that I was allowed to accept myself physically, and that was a scary thing, especially coming from my parents.
7:46 One of the biggest drivers for depression is a future that doesn’t seem like a place you want to be a part of doesn’t feel safe and doesn’t seem comfortable. In fact, it feels like it’s gonna be a painful place, too, more so than where you are right now.
9:18 On August 21st of 2012, life had been the most painful it has ever been. Every day was the most difficult day of my life, and I live in full confidence that the next day would be even worse. And when you do that long enough not only do not know how it got to this point, you don’t know how to get out of it. Because there’s so much shame and stigma wrapped around it, you don’t know how to say Hey I don’t know what I'm doing here but, man, things are not working out, and so I tried to end my life.
11:05 I believe this to be true for the majority of people: Suicide isn’t someone wanting to end their lives; it’s someone wanting to end their pain.
12:45 The things that we choose to believe have consequences on us and the people that we care about.
15:42 The reason why I have survived all of those moments, those years, and that experience was because my body has never once given up on me. My body has been fighting for me since the day I was born, regardless of the way I treated it.
16:18 When I switch the mindset to not what's the matter with me, but what matters to me in terms of my physical health, my social health, my emotional health, then you're very clear about which direction you want to go. Then every decision that you make isn't about what not to do. It's about what's going to enhance the opportunity for you to show up in life in a way that feels meaningful to you.
19:13 The nutrition conversation is about trying to inform better decisions and patterns over time.
20:28 Human research data over time shows that fiber is dose-dependent to benefit, meaning the more you consume, the better the benefit, the greater the reduction of all-cause of mortality, and the greater the increase of human health outcomes over time.
28:12 What I think is so important, what I think matters most in recovery, isn't “Why don't they stop?” It's “Why does it make sense?” It's such a more valuable question to ask.
28:30 If we can understand why it makes sense that someone uses drugs, we can reorganize their life, we can organize their dietary pattern, and we can reorganize their emotional patterns in a way that reconnecting seemed a lot more likely. Use may not stop entirely over the course of the rest of their life. But the intention may be different. And the frequency will be far less.
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This podcast is hosted by Allison Walsh and Dr. Angela Phillips. It is produced by Allison Walsh, Savannah Eckstrom, and Nicole LaNeve. If you’re interested in being a guest on this podcast, please visit www.therecoveryvillage.com/dearmindyoumatter.
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Allison: 00:02
Hello and welcome to the dear mind, do you matter podcast? My name is Allison Walsh. I'm a longtime mental health advocate and vice president at Advanced Recovery Systems. On each episode I will be joined by my colleague and clinical expert, Dr. Angela Phillips. This show along with our mental health and wellness app, Nobu are just some of the ways we're working to provide you with actionable tips and tools to take really good care of yourself each and every day. So sit back, relax and grab your favorite note taking device, it's time to fill your mind with things that matter.
Angela: 00:36
Welcome to this week's conversation with Adam said Adam is an insulin resistance disease reversal weight loss and food addiction expert with amazing personal experiences to share. He's worked with some of the most respected programs and companies in the health and wellness world. He served as an insulin resistance and food addiction coach for mastering diabetes using plant based nutrition and as a clinical health coach for Whole Foods Markets global Wellness Center at the company headquarters. Adam is an international speaker for the health and wellness movement and addiction recovery movement and has presented at some of the biggest health and wellness events, Adam has worked with mental health recovery centers using nutrition as a tool for strengthening recovery and relapse prevention. He's also the founder of a nonprofit plant based for positive change that is dedicated to advancing the research of diet and mental health addiction and has completed the very first research study to investigate the effects of a nutrient dense dietary intervention on early addiction recovery outcomes. Adam firmly believes that the simplest change on your fork makes the most profound change of your life. And that self love is the root of all recovery. Welcome, Adam. Adam,
Allison: 01:47
it is so great to have you on the show today, would you mind introducing yourself to our audience.
Adam Sud 01:52
I'm excited to be here. So my name is Adam side. I live in Austin, Texas, and I'm a person in long term recovery. In fact, in a couple of days, I will have 10 years of continuous recovery. I'm also a nutrition researcher and I have been spending the last four or five years investigating the role that nutrition plays on addiction recovery and mental health outcomes. And before that, I had been doing a lot of clinical work around the reversal of insulin resistance, as well as being a running programs within treatment facilities to use nutrition as a vehicle for increased treatment effects and for relapse prevention.
Allison: 02:28
Awesome. Thank you for giving us a snapshot into what you've been spending your time on. And you mentioned your recovery. Congratulations on 10 years. This was a huge part of why you leaned into nutrition and this and can you give us just a little bit more of your backstory to because he shared that with me before and it's just a powerful Yeah, Tony to what's possible. Yeah. So
Adam Sud 02:51
I grew up in Texas. So I'm like a sixth or seventh generation Texan. I'm also Jewish. So I grew up eating burgers and barbecue and bagels and blintzes. Right? Certainly nothing that anyone would consider a quality dietary pattern. But of course, you know, when you grow up, and it's all you're surrounded by when it's what you eat, when your family eats when your friends eat, what's with your friend, family eat? It's the environment that you're thrown into you don't question it. And in fact, you know, growing up, I had a phenomenal childhood, my dad was really present with us growing up taught me how to play every sport under the sun. My mom was involved in inspiring my imagination. However, there were a few things that did profoundly affect me growing up, and one of which was my relationship to myself in regards to food. And I don't remember exactly how old I was, I was probably around 10 years old. I was born in 82. So this would have been 1992 in Houston, Texas, you have to imagine in the summer in Texas in the early 90s When there was really no social media and video games weren't really the big thing that they are now, in the summer in Texas, you ran around all day long in your bathing suit. And one friend's front yard doing a slip and slide do another friend yard run through sprinklers back to your house to eat that come running into the house and my parents, like they stopped me. And they said hey, whoa, why do you already have love handles? Now 10 years old, not only do I not know what they are or how you get them, but at that time in my life, I was very accepting of myself both physically and emotionally. And all of a sudden, I was told that they're now conditioned that I was allowed to accept myself physically. And that was a scary thing for me, especially coming from my parents who are the kind of Guardians of my life right there. I didn't know that love handled the result of a too many calories but was interesting was it created a hyper vigilance in me, where if there's one condition that people won't accept me, are there others and why do I don't know where they are. And this spiraled into a poor relationship with food or relationship with myself trying constantly to be aware of whether someone was making some kind of expression or behaving in some kind of way that indicated that there's something about me that needs to be changed and that spiraled into a substance abuse issue in high school. We moved to Austin, Texas, right before I started high school, which was tough. I was an awkward freshman, which was tough. I got bullied The most of my freshman year pretty badly. This was before the big awareness and bullying. So bullying was just the thing that you had to deal with. And when I discovered Adderall, which I was prescribed, by the way, I was prescribed Adderall for ADHD starting in middle school. But in high school, I discovered it was a successful way to become accepted by those who were harming me every day, which was phenomenal. And when I used it as a recreational drug for the first time, because I had never done that before, I found there was a solution to other things that were making my life difficult. My parents, I was slightly overweight. Adderall is an amphetamine, that's what the stuff is. And I'm not anti medicine. I'm not anti Adderall. I'm just trying to clarify for individuals. And so amphetamine for me became a vehicle that allowed me to lose weight with ease and repeatability. That's really attractive, someone who has never been able to solve this problem, it allowed me to become socially acceptable, not only socially acceptable, socially valued for someone who had not been able to solve that problem, to be able to do it with ease and repeatability all that incredibly attractive. And not only that, it allowed me to develop behaviors that looked like I figured out how to become a good student into my dad, that was really exciting. So my dad and I's relationship had finally gotten better, which was really exciting. And when I can do it with ease and report repeatability very, very attractive. That's really important. And I'd like to specify the ease and repeatability part because when we talk about addiction, it's really important that for most people, addiction, to beginning stages of their use, seemed like an easy and repeatable solution to problems in their life, that they have not been able to solve in any other way with the same kind of ease and repeatability. And I latched on to it. And of course, as things progressed in the college got worse, I ended up dropping out of school came home more with Never Enough with the constant problem, it forced me into behaviors that were locked in figma, and shame having to go onto the street. And by having to do things to people that I didn't really want to do. But oh man, if you could just know what it felt like when it worked. That's the thing. It was so valuable in such an incredible position once I can figure this out again, and I was going through so much so quickly that I ended up engaging in a lot of behaviors around food that I used to engage in as a kid, I hadn't gone anywhere, the image that felt that the relationship with self hadn't been resolved, it just switched from food to Adderall. Well, now I needed both. And over the course of the next four or five years, not only was I doing copious amounts of Adderall, I was also eating copious amounts of fat food. And so by 2010, I weighed 350 pounds, I had no job, I had severed all my meaningful and loving bonds with myself, people that shared my life with my purpose that was beyond myself, that I wanted to share within a community of shared respect. And now for the first time ever, my future looks like a very terrifying place to be a part of. That's also very, very important. When we talk about anxiety. When we talk about depression. One of the biggest drivers for depression is a feature that doesn't seem like a place you want to be a part of. It doesn't seem safe, it doesn't seem comfortable. In fact, it feel like it's going to be a very painful place to be more so than where you are right now. And so my life was just out of control. And my father and my family had tried everything they could to help me and they offered me opportunities to go and in fact, my dad was dragged me this presentation by a man named rip Esselstyn and I didn't know at the time that this would be such a pivotal moment in my recovery, an individual named rip Esselstyn, who is the son of the famous Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, he and Dean Ornish were Bill Clinton's doctor who helped him reverse his heart disease. And Rick was talking about something he calls a plant strong diet, which is really a plant based diet, it has a catchy title to it, you know, at the time was like, I don't care, like just make my dad think I care so that, you know, if I need you, I can ask him for money. Like I have no interest in doing this whatsoever. Even though it was like a five to seven day deal. Every one of these luminary doctors and thought leaders would present this information. This really makes sense, this seems like a reasonable thing to do in order to move in a direction that's going to make my life better. However, I wasn't willing to give up what was allowing me to escape a life that was too painful a place to be on the gamble that this would actually work out in one year. And that's really important. And so by 2012, my life was the most painful that had ever been, I had started to develop symptoms of medical conditions that I wasn't aware of. At the time, I had erectile dysfunction, I was weak from being homeless. And on August 21, of 2012, life had been the most painful it had ever been. Every day was the most difficult day of my life. And I lived in the full confidence that the next day will be even worse. And then when you do that long enough, and the reasons for it are cloaked in enough shame and stigma that not only do you not know how it got to this point, you don't know how to get out of it. You don't know that it's okay not to know how to get out of it. But because there's so much shame and stigma wrapped around it you also don't know it's okay to say hey, look, I don't know what I'm doing here but man things are not working out. I'm really am trying my best to figure this out. And the only way I know how to do it right now is making it work and I don't know any other way to do it. And so I tried to end my life. If you
Allison: 09:58
or someone you know Oh is struggling with addiction or mental health issues, we encourage you to reach out to us today. Advanced Recovery Systems is a leading behavioral health care company with locations across this country. Don't hesitate, call us today at 855-409-1753. That's 855-409-1753 help is just a phone call away.
Adam Sud 10:22
I intentionally overdosed, and woke up at one of my safe bet failure in my life, I woke up in my apartment in a puddle of vomit and a pile of fast food garbage. And I was overwhelmed with incredible relief. And you have to understand that up until that moment, I fully believe that the solution I was about to make was to end my life. What was really remarkable about this overwhelming feeling of relief, was it it presented the reality that there was actually something about myself in my life that I loved enough. There's actually something about myself in my life that was meaningful enough that even though today was likely going to be the most difficult day I've ever experienced, I was still very relieved to be a part of it. And what that presented to me was that for me, and I believe this to be true for the majority of people, suicide isn't someone wanting to end their life, it's someone wanting to end their pain, period, end of story. That's what it is. And if they knew a better way to do it, and if it looked easy enough and convenient enough, they would likely do it. But we don't. And as I mentioned before, typically what we struggle with is cloaked in enough stigma and enough shame that to go openly and say what we're dealing with, and that we don't know, and that we've gotten to this point that we let it go this long, is so hard and so scary, because it could be something that severs connection even further, it could be the thing that when you tell someone they go, I don't want to be around you. It could be that likely won't. But it could be that we're likely not to do it. And I was the person that I think most people have known in their life, that if you're a friend of mine, and you love me or for your family member and you love me, you would have come up to me at some point, you would have said to me see what you're doing to yourself. Don't you see what this pattern of life is leading you towards what you're doing to your family, what you're doing to your friends, what you're doing to yourself, why won't you stop? And if you said that to me, I would have looked right, you write down and said, Man, you fu you don't know me? You think you do, but you don't know how hard my life is. And you don't know how successfully that's one call the same issue. I just need to figure it out again. And if it costs me five years, if it cost me 10 years, I'm fine with it. And I think about that. Now, if I had been successful on August 21, what would my family not do for five more years with me? What would they not give up for five more days with me? I mean, to the people who are listening, think about someone who has mattered the most to you and your life who is no longer here for whatever reason, how valuable with five more minutes to be with him, you know, the things that we choose to believe have consequences on us and the people that we care about. And this really came like this huge weight on me. The reality of that. And I didn't love myself enough yet. But I realized that there was a reason there was something that was saying, Hey, you got to pick up the phone, you got to make that call. It's really hard right now you got to do this thing. And so that's what I did. I picked up the phone and I called my parents and they helped me find a treatment center to check into about two weeks later. And within 72 hours, I was diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, a whole host of psychological and emotional condition, Sleep Disorder, Anxiety disorders, put on cabinets with a medication. And all of a sudden, they retreat that my dad had dragged me back to came flooding back. Because here I was in front of a doctor who was trying to convince me and I think this is a story. Most people have bought into that you're diabetic, because it's the reality of your genetics. This is a fault of your genetics, there's just a situation you're going to have. Same with your heart disease. Same with your obesity, we can do something but likely there's going to be a struggle for you genetically, you're just gonna have to deal with this. I remembered these incredibly resilient luminary thought leaders and doctors saying the reason why the majority of people end up with diabetes and heart disease and obesity. And because it is the most reasonable response, a healthy body can have an environment that is way too thick. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. Because what I have to leave it at that, right? Why not do this thing got a year of recovery in front of me where the whole thing is going to be difficult anyways, not that it's going to be hard, but it's going to be difficult, there's gonna be things I'm going to have to figure out how to do differently. One thing I've been pretty good at was putting food on my plate. So let's just change the calorie source. Let's do this thing. Why not? I don't understand addiction yet. I don't understand mental health that much. But I couldn't follow this protocol. And so that's what I did. I implemented what Rick calls a plant strong diet. It's simply just a plant based diet, a fiber rich, low fat plant based diet. And within six months of my diagnosis, the diabetes the heart disease in the erectile dysfunction were completely reverse medications gone. Within 10 months, I lost 150 pounds. Within one year. I was also on every medication that I would put on a rehab, antidepressants and mood stabilizers, sleeping medications, all of it and when I find so incredible was that a along that journey, I saw nutrition being this incredible vehicle that allowed me to reconnect to some of those bonds that had been severed. Because I think like a lot of people, I grew up believing that my body was my adversary, right? That's a cultural thing that people are taught, oh, it's what you're going to have to do is you're going to really have to restrict you're gonna really have to overexert because you know, your body just seemed to want to be larger, or your body just seems to want to be sick, or your body just doesn't seem to want to do the things that someone else has told you to believe it needs to do. And having gone through 1015 years of very serious chemical abuse, whether it's toxic food or toxic drugs, and surviving suicide, I can remember having a conversation with my house manager and coming to the reality, how wrong I had been about that, that the reason why I had survived all of those moments, those years, and that experience was because my body had never once given up on me, my body has been fighting for me since the day I was born. Regardless of the way I treated it. My body has been my biggest ally my entire life, I just have to be very clear about the priorities and values for how I want to be a caretaker of this body, regardless of how it looks. That's not a factor here. How do I want it to feel? How do I want to feel something that has been fighting for me since the day I was born, and wants nothing more than me, for me to thrive? When I switch the mindset to not what's the matter with me, but what matters to me in terms of my physical health, my social health, my emotional health, then you're very clear about which direction you want to go, then every decision that you make isn't about what not to do. It's about what's going to enhance the opportunity for you to show up in life in a way that feels meaningful to you. Not that you're not that you care about a destination, but just the journey of continually increasing that opportunity. So I got very curious about nutrition after that. And that's what led me to do the work that I do.
Angela: 16:47
Adam, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, I don't even know where to start with you. Because it's such an amazing story. And I know, Allison and I relate to it in so many ways. And I'm sure so many of our listeners are just like not knowing what to do with themselves right now. And I think they find themselves in a similar position to where you never know when something's really going to hit home with you. And I think that's probably why so many people love listening to you, and just hearing what you have to say, because you've gone through so many different things. And again, it's just so relatable in so many different ways. But you are able to really get at drawing these connections. And obviously, you've done so much work. That's very clear. And so just thank you, thank you, thank you for our sharing. And we appreciate that so much. And with such little time we have left with you, I really want to focus in on, you know, when you really started to see where, okay, I'm going to make a decision and really focus on one aspect of myself. And that's my body. And I love what you said there just in relation to it's been there with you fighting this this whole time. And it's been obviously gotten you to where you are, but it's never gone anywhere, even when you wanted it to right. Yeah, I know, regardless of what our listeners are struggling with, it's the same for all of us. If we're listening to this, we're still here. And our body's helping us get through that whatever that is, but in terms of, you know, the dietary pattern that you speak to, and really just what's been the most helpful for you, since we really want to focus on that, I know you have these three sort of core areas or things that might be something that someone who's listening could really hone in on. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about that. And then I also have sort of this ulterior side that I'd love to hear a little bit more about as people are listening to you speak and really, the cultural and social components are hitting home. I really want you to talk a little bit more about that too. Yeah. Into this great,
Adam Sud 18:41
yeah. So when it comes to nutrition, unfortunately, we live in a culture now that is we have a very loud diet conversation on social media, got a huge microphone, telling you what foods are good and what are bad, what's right and what's wrong. That's usually driven by trying to develop some kind of opportunity to guide someone towards a societal standard of what they deem health is confusion around body size. And it's usually around looking like you understand what you're doing around nutrition, being able to say, Oh, I don't do this, right, do this. We need to stop thinking like that. The nutrition conversation is about trying to inform better decisions and patterns over time. So when we think about nutrition, we can't think of it as a day to day thing. Your diet is a pattern. And that pattern can be considered something that is aligned with your values and priorities for how you want to live or not aligned, not what's right or what's wrong, but what are you trying to do and how are you trying to get there. And what I find so wonderful about nutrition research is that when it comes to all things is fat, good or bad? Are carbs good or bad protein good or bad? It's all good or bad. All these things. There's valuable research on both sides of the aisle to disgusted.
Allison: 19:50
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Adam Sud 20:18
The one thing that everyone unanimously agrees upon is fiber fiber in terms of the research and the evidence, and I'm talking about quality human data, human research data over time shows that fiber is dose dependent to benefit meaning the more you consume, the better the benefit, the greater the reduction of all cause mortality, and the greater the increase of human health outcomes over time. What I found in the research study that I conducted is that fiber also plays this role in regards to mental health recovery and treatment that are settings that the individuals who had the highest amount of fiber in their dietary pattern compared to individuals who had the lowest amount of fiber in their dietary pattern, the ones that had the highest had at 10 weeks, the greatest increase in self esteem, resilience, and self compassion. Now, these are the emotional variables. We also thought huge variables in physical health, but we weren't really investigating that because the research is already there. But this is incredibly valuable. So one of the things I tell people is, yeah, it's great to know how many grams of protein are you getting? I mean, granted, the fatter you're getting, I mean, grams of carbohydrate Are you eating, but very few people are looking at fiber? And if you were to say, hey, how do I design a dietary pattern where on average, I'm getting at least 30 grams of fiber a day, you're likely and this is from whole impact plant foods, not fiber supplements, whole intact plant foods, you're likely to design a dietary pattern that fits a lot of other things beyond your mental health, this is an easy variable to do just focus on fiber fiber is valuable because it feeds something called your gut microbiome. There's some statistics out there that might blow your mind here. This is really interesting. So if I was to take Angela right now, and we were to go in, and actually count the number of cells that make up Angela, the human, you have about 10 trillion Angela, human cells. Now inside of your gut right now, there's about four to six pounds of bacteria that are made up of microbes that comprise your gut microbiome. And these microbes are responsible for doing things that your body is uncapable of doing itself that benefit your health. Now, these are not human cells, he's not yours, either bacterial microbes, if we were to count the number of cells that make up the microbes in your microbiome, the number close to 100 trillion. So what that means is, of all the cells in front of us right now, that make up Angela, your 10%. Human, you are mostly your microbiome, and everything that's alive on this planet either is or has a microbiome, this is an incredibly influential factor in your health. The only thing that feeds beneficial microbes in your gut microbiome is fiber. And each microbe consumes a unique plant fiber. So the more diverse the source of fiber, meaning the more varied plants you eat per week, the more you're increasing the population of different beneficial microbes in your gut that do different things, one of which is producing the nutrients and the molecules that cross the blood brain barrier that are responsible for the production of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, we all heard the statistic that 90% of your serotonin and half of your dopamine exists in your gut. While that's true, that's fascinating. Those do not and cannot cross the blood brain barrier. They are not a part of your neural function. However, your gut is responsible for producing the precursors that cross the blood brain barrier. This is valuable. And this is somebody that the majority of people had the opportunity to reorganize into their life starting today, do you want it to you could reorganize your caloric environment to be beneficial to your gut microbiome today. And the great thing is, you can shift your microbiome diversity dramatically within 72 hours. If you were to take a sample of your gut microbiome today, but you on a fiber rich diet and test it in 72 hours, it looks completely different. That is how impactful simply focusing on fiber can be now are you going to notice it in 72 hours, no, but the change is happening that quickly. This is very valuable. This is something that you can say hey, I've simply reorganized my environment in a way that I can put confidence in the fact that this is serving me not just physically but emotionally. That's very powerful. So I say let's increase fiber we know this number two let's drink water. No, no, I'm not saying just water but I'm saying let's drink water. Okay, and I know that this is funny of my fiance was looking right now to go at him. I rarely ever see drink water and that's funny thing and it's a little bit true, but I do drink electrolyte water stuff. That's whatever reason plain water is hard for me. Don't feel thirsty very often. So we need to drink more water.
Angela: 24:54
I am the same way and I like yeah, like flavored water but it's like how can I drink more water I know Why not to
Adam Sud 25:01
electrolyte packs? It's fine. It's great, great. And the other thing is to simply reduce. You don't have to eliminate your consumption of meat, eggs and dairy. But most people are eating too much too often that it's compromising their ability to get enough fiber. Right fiber doesn't come from meat, eggs and dairy, there isn't any in it. So likely, people are eating so much meat and dairy, that that's why they can't get enough fiber, we need to replace some of those calories from meat, eggs and dairy calories that come from fiber rich, low fat plant based source. If we do that, we're going to make some substantial changes in the population health, I think it's a valuable thing to do.
Allison: 25:36
hugely beneficial. And I mean, I think these are things that we can do right now. And as you said, for those of us that do like quick turnaround on a change in life, right, yeah, we know, within a short period of time, we're going to start to experience the benefits of this. And then it's about committing to it, which is just really the principle of everything, right? Like committing to whatever it is that you're focusing on, so that you can get the results that you want. So this has been such an amazing conversation. And I think we should wrap it up for like part two, because we can't even get into all the research, right? Like you've done so much you're getting out. Articles are getting published, like you're speaking and sharing your wisdom with people everywhere. And we are super blessed to have been able to spend some time with you today. But we love before we let you go for this version of our episode. Yeah, I would love to hear and we love to ask everybody this, but at this point in your life, what matters most to you right now?
Adam Sud 26:29
Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a valuable question. It's actually one of the most valuable questions in recovery. So many people ask a question, like when I mentioned before, how can we get you to stop someone who's abusing substances or alcohol? If you're someone who's doing other things damaging or creating disorder? The reasonable question on the outside is, why won't you stop? How do we get you to stop rather than asking what I think is much more valuable question, which is, why does it make sense that you do what you do. And if we look at these people's lives, we would see that for the majority of these people, their use makes sense. And this comes down to meaningful and loving bonds in our lives, that give us the experience of feeling fully alive in a meaningful way. And when I think about those things, I think there's about four, four meaningful and loving bonds in our life, that when they're connected, they give us the experience of feeling alive, fully alive in a meaningful way. One is a loving and meaningful relationship with yourself, both physically and emotionally that you want to be present for every day. Number two is a meaningful and loving bond with people in your life that you want to be present with and show up and be present for every single day. A loving and meaningful bond with a purpose beyond yourself that you can share within a community of shared respect that you want to be present for every single day and a future that feels safe. And that you want to be a part of that you want to show up and work for every single day when those loving and meaningful bonds are connected is just as high as it's always been the likelihood of use, it's far less. And the reason is because you know that using compromises your ability to show up and be present, and those meaningful and loving bonds in your life that give you the opportunity to feel fully alive in a meaningful way. Now, is it easy to reconnect those things? No. Does it happen overnight? Absolutely not? Are they easily severed in our culture? Absolutely. But what I think is so important, what I think what matters most in recovery, isn't why don't they stop? It's why does it make sense? It's such a more valuable question to ask. Because if we can understand why it makes sense that someone uses, we can reorganize their life, we can organize their dietary pattern, we can reorganize their emotional patterns into a way that reconnecting seemed a lot more likely use may not stop entirely over the course of the rest of their life. But the opportunity use, like I said, won't go anywhere, but the intention may be different. And the frequency will be far less that valuable. That's useful. So what I think is most meaningful, what is it that gives you that experience of feeling fully alive? If you can identify those things, that's why you're going to do whatever you need to do in recovery. People think it's the negative consequences. I do not believe people are motivated by negative consequences. I think negative consequences do an amazing thing by highlighting loving and meaningful bonds in your life that are being threatened. Otherwise, there would be no consequence. There's something incredibly valuable that's going on here that's being taken from your life. That's why you're going to do whatever you do, you're going to do it because you have something in your life worth fighting for. And so for me, that's what it is.
Angela: 29:19
Yeah, I love it. And thank you so much you've given us so much to think about and I'm sure we just can't wait to have you back and talk about so many other questions we have for you. And I would love to be able to share with everyone you know links to your research the work that you're doing, we'll definitely put that in the show notes. But can you share with our listeners how we can follow you on social media or otherwise how can they find you?
Adam Sud 29:45
Yeah, so I have an Instagram account. And I just started a tick tock account called plant based attic for the same for both so you can follow me there started just recently in a documentary that just came out on iTunes called disease reversal hope, the phenomenal documentary out the value of a nutrition and the ability to reverse and recapture your health. So definitely check that out. And then I do a lot of speaking. So there's events that I speak out every single year. One of them is called a plant strong retreat with rip Esselstyn, so you can check out plant strong.com. I can't wait to come back and have another conversation with both of you.
Angela: 30:19
Thank you so much, Adam. We will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribed, we hope you join us regularly. And please leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show. We hope that this podcast is beneficial to you and your wellness journey. Dear mind you matter is brought to you by Nobu, a new mental health and wellness app. You can download it today using the link in our show notes. We will talk to you next time and until then remember you and your mind matter.